[OSM-talk] [OSM-legal-talk] In what direction should OSM go?

[john whelan]

My view is there are very different requirements in different
countries.  Countries such as Australia, US, Canada have much lower
population densities than many European countries.  It's just not
practical to rely on people with GPS devices and cycles.  Yes there is
tracing from satellite images but I don't see a sense of community
developing here, and some of the data input is of poor quality.

I think there is a place for imports, bus stops for example.  I also
think there is plenty of opportunity to add tags and points of
interest to .OSM and that's where we have an advantage.

At the end of the day to get something that is useful to people surely
is the objective, not to sit round drinking coffee together.

Cheerio John

On 29 September 2010 05:50, Elizabeth Dodd <edodd at billiau.net> wrote:
> This belongs back on talk
> with a new header.
> OSM states that it is a free map, free to edit and free to use
> Whether the database should contain imported stuff, traced stuff, or
> only personally surveyed stuff is a very big issue and any intent now
> to alter the basic rules of inputting should be back on Talk.
>
>
> On Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:03:15 +0200
> Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Francis Davey wrote:
>> > My suggestion - which I believe has been/is being chewed over by the
>> > LWG - is that the CT's make an alternative arrangement for
>> > contributors who want to contribute material that is licensed under
>> > some other licence.
>>
>> Any future license change would then be constrained to the common
>> denominator of all these licenses *or* risk repeating all the data
>> loss whining that we're seeing now.
>>
>> The question I am asking myself is: Is the ability to import as much
>> government data as possible really worth the hassle? And my personal
>> answer is a clear no; because to me, the value of imported data is
>> very small, almost neglibile compared to data contributed by members.
>>
>> I am not against imports in general; I believe there are some
>> isolated cases where a government or other dataset has really helped
>> the project. But I don't see any individual import, or the ability to
>> import data at all, as crucial for OSM's success.
>>
>> I am especially surprised about the mood in the UK community. The UK
>> is where OSM started because David didn't want to be bossed around by
>> Goliath any longer; it is this "let's show the OS what a bunch of
>> hobby mappers can do" attitude that has given OSM much of its energy
>> in the early days. But today, it seems to me that half of the UK
>> community is of the opinion that OSM is dead if it cannot use OS
>> "open" data. If that had been the mood from day one, OSM would never
>> have started at all.
>>
>> I firmly believe that collecting third-party geodata into an user
>> editable pool is NOT the main purpose of OSM, and even detracts us.
>>
>> Thus, I would never accept future liabilities in return for being
>> allowed to import a third-party data source.
>>
>> Bye
>> Frederik
>>
>
>
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